Saving Obama's Credibility

There are no good choices. President Obama has muddled his way into an impasse and now he is calling on Congress to bail him out. We are told that it’s for the good of the country.

A president who does not especially identify as leader of the nation, a president who has already eaten his words about the “red line” in Syria, a president who abrogates responsibility for his own words by saying that it’s not his credibility, but the world’s that is on the line… this president needs Congress to save him.

One fears that that ship has already sailed.

Ross Douthat framed the issue well this morning in The New York Times:

When the House and Senate vote on whether to authorize strikes on Bashar al-Assad, they’ll be choosing between two potentially disastrous paths: either endorse a quasi-war that many constituents oppose and that this White House seems incapable of justifying on the merits, or vote to basically finish off the current American president as a credible actor on the world stage.

But, why does Douthat still believe that Obama is a credible actor on the world stage?
The situation as it unfolds today shows a world in which the American president is not a credible leader.

While Obama dawdles and Congress deliberates the RussianNavy is steaming toward the Eastern Mediterranean. This morning we learn thatthe Chinese Navy is sending its own naval vessels and marines to “observe” the action.

Russia and China have taken the measure of President Obama as world leader and have found him lacking. They are making their moves.

Douthat seems to believe that a Congressional vote, followed by a few Tomahawk missiles is going to save the president’s credibility. As I have pointed out, there is no real credibility left to save.

President Obama himself said it loudly and clearly. His credibility is not on the line in Syria. Why should Congress defend the president’s credibility when he does not seem to understand the concept?

The American people voted for it. Now they will have to live with the consequences of their vote.

To state the obvious, the Obama foreign policy team is a sad bunch of poseurs and amateurs. Russia and China have taken the measure of a foreign policy team consisting of John Kerry, Susan Rice, Chuck Hagel and Samantha Power. They see an America that yearns to retreat from the world stage, that finds the burden of leadership too onerous.

Douthat offered some historical analogies:

The historical models would be our 1986 strike on Muammar el-Qaddafi or Operation Desert Fox against Saddam Hussein in 1998; each campaign had a limited purpose that didn’t open into wider war.

Unfortunately, Douthat has failed to mention the best historical analogy: Bill Clinton’s bombing runs against Afghanistan and Somalia in 1998. It confirmed what the terrorists had believed: that a decadent president did not have the stomach for a confrontation with Islamic terrorism.

Regardless of what Congress does and regardless of what Obama finally does, the game is over. It’s time to start assessing the damage that has befallen America and the world. It’s time for America do start asking itself how it elected so feckless and detached and inexperienced a man to the presidency.

Even if Congress votes yes, and even if Obama responds, the world will not be fooled by a little macho posturing.

Douthat argued his best case for Obama:

It is to President Obama’s great discredit that he has staked this credibility on a vote whose outcome he failed to game out in advance. But if he loses that vote, the national interest as well as his political interests will take a tangible hit: for the next three years, American foreign policy will be in the hands of a president whose promises will ring consistently hollow, and whose ability to make good on his strategic commitments will be very much in doubt.

Douthat is saying that Obama likes to shoot his mouth off. He likes to posture and bluster, but does not conduct policy. Congress does not have the power to make him into a leader.

Roger Kimball explained in excruciating detail why the Obama presidency lacks anything that even resembles credibility. It will take a lot more than a missile strike to restore American credibility.

In Kimball’s words:

Here’s the thing: from a certain distance and in a certain light Obama looks like an Important Person, the president of the United States, leader of the free (or at least formerly free) world, just as John Kerry looks (well, sort of looks) like something more than an insufferable prig and blowhard.

But take a closer look. You see that they are both completely out of their depth. Obama jets around on Air Force One. He spends tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money on an African adventure for himself and his family while closing the White House to school tours because of the sequester. He swaggers just like he’s a big deal, but here’s the rub: the least-experienced president in the the history of the republic, the man whom nobody knew, the guy whose college transcripts we can’t see,  whose legislative record was one long evasive “Present,” whose repellent racialist pandering has set race relations back decades in this country, whose Alinskyite demonize-your-opponents radicalism has further poisoned the character of American politics: this mountebank has succeeded mightily in fulfilling his promise of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” making us poorer, less secure, less free, and less influential than we were when he came to office. 

You might not like the picture, but it’s exactly what the Russians and the Chinese see. It’s why they are moving their ships and marines toward the coast of Syria.